A letter signed on Friday by a group of 40 state attorney generals, called on Congress to reject the state’s “irresponsible” federal action to enforce its own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems for the next decade.
A letter from the National Association of Attorney Generals said that the “wide range” state AI moratorium scale caught up in the federal budget settlement bill “wipes away and completely destroys reasonable national efforts to prevent known harm related to AI.”
The AG, which dealt with letters to the majority and minority leaders of the Senate and House, said, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, that the moratorium disrupts the hundreds of measures already dying in state legislatures and Republicans and Democrats.
They said that in the absence of federal laws codified consumer protection against the overlapping use of AI systems, the states have set themselves up to protect residents from harm after the introduction of new technologies, citing data privacy laws and social media harm as past examples. The group said the historic lack of federal lawsuits has made the state legislature a default forum to address the risks of AI, and has been appointed state attorney general in most cases. The group said stripping its authority would hurt consumers.
“This bill does not propose a regulatory scheme that replaces or supplements the laws being enacted or currently under consideration by states, leaving Americans who are not fully protected from the potential harms of AI,” the letter reads. Additionally, the bill aims to wipe out the already in place state-level framework. It is irresponsible to impose a widespread suspension on all state actions while legislators do not act in this region, and deprives consumers of reasonable protection. ”
The federal government follows this year’s action-packed state legislative session. According to an analysis of the National Congress, 48 states and Puerto Rico have introduced AI laws, with 26 states adopting or enacting at least 75 new AI measures.
2025 predicted a wave of new AI laws in 2025, a year after state lawmakers introduced nearly 700 AI laws. Over the past few years, AI laws have tried to protect personal identity from use of AI in explicit content generated, prevent the creation and sharing of deepfakes of political campaigns, and prohibit the use of AI and send spam calls and texts. Other measures required disclosure when consumers were interacting with AI.
The proposed moratorium is also garnering rage from more than 140 other civil rights and consumer protection organizations who wrote a letter to Congress on Monday. Letters signed by groups such as the Democracy Technology Center, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Southern Poverty Law Center point to certain harms that could be given if some regulations, such as transparency requirements, are removed with the aim of allowing free industry growth.
“This moratorium means that even if companies intentionally design algorithms that cause foreseeable harm, regardless of how they devastate fraud or terrible or consequences, they cannot explain the bad technology to lawmakers and the public,” the document reads. “In many cases, it becomes virtually impossible for state regulators to achieve the level of transparency into AI systems necessary to enforce laws of general applicability, such as tort and differentiation laws.”
Hayley Tsukayama, associate director of legislative activities at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in a blog post last week that the organization is “strongly” opposed to the moratorium. She noted that the action only benefits AI companies, pointing to the Colorado example. In Colorado, several AI companies lobbyed earlier this month to slow and weaken Colorado’s groundbreaking AI laws.
“It’s hard to even conceptualize how the AI industry will differ from what it looks like just three years ago and now, so it’s hard to conceptualize how it will differ from 10 years later. State legislators must be able to respond to new issues.” “Many state AI proposals have struggled to find the right balance between innovation and speech on the one hand, while on the other hand, find equal opportunities and equal opportunities. EFF supports several bills to regulate AI and opposes others.
